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Creative solutions to handle food waste

In praise of gleaning, food rescue, doggie bags, leftovers and other ways to maximize consumption.Food waste is a daunting problem, but there are countless solutions to get us started. Many of them are small and easily executed.

Ed Borkowski, executive director of the Ontario Association of Food Banks, is thrilled with the corn and other veggies gleaned from Whittamore's Farm in Markham just before Thanksgiving. The farm let volunteers from Direct Energy pick unwanted harvest for the food bank. (CARLOS OSORIO / TORONTO STAR) | Order this photo

“The research shows that 25 million pounds of produce is left on the vine or tilled in and sent to landfill in Ontario,” says the association's executive director, Ed Borkowski.

“Along with that vast quantity of food, you have 375,000 Ontarians lining up at food banks every month. It just seemed like such a natural fit.”

It launched Community Harvest Ontario two years ago and now more than 20 Ontario farms turn over fields for gleaning or gleaned crops. This year more than 1 million pounds (454,000 kilos) of food was collected — double its goal.

Direct Energy encourages staff to take one paid day a year to volunteer, and employees logged more than 10,000 hours in 2010 across North America. Gleaning is just one of dozens of options.

The Whittamore's event drew employees like Carlos Dias and Julie Kidd, who loved working outdoors for “a great cause” while chatting about how the Maple Leafs are doing. It also drew Rob Comstock, senior vice-president of home and business services, who tries to attend as many employee or volunteer events as possible.

“You can imagine what would happen if we didn't do this,” he says while filling a clear plastic bag with red and green bell peppers. “This is a great tactic to address the issue of food waste.”

In Toronto, a fruit rescue group called Not Far From The Tree is having great success with urban gleaning.

Seven hundred volunteers harvested nearly 20,000 pounds (9,000 kilos) of fruit from 228 Toronto trees on private property this year — more than the 2008 and 2009 harvests combined.

The fruit (transported by bicycle for a low-carbon footprint) was evenly divided among property owners, volunteers and food banks and shelters.

“There is an estimated 1.5 million pounds of fruit growing within city limits each year, much of which goes to waste,” says founder Laura Reinsborough. “This is so much potential to expand this successful project to all parts of Toronto.”

Then there's Second Harvest. For 25 years it has been picking up excess fresh food daily from supermarkets, hotels, caterers and restaurants, and driving it to more than 200 social service agencies.

Then there's the green bin. The city of Toronto collects organic waste (fruit and vegetable scraps, paper towels, animal waste, fish, coffee grinds and materials that break down naturally) every week and turns it into compost.

In 2008, it diverted 44 per cent of our garbage from landfill even though just 500,000 homes had green bin service. More apartments, condos and co-ops are being brought on board.

There are people who see how well the city has done nudging people to separate their food waste from other garbage who hope we'll take the next step and allow community composting.

Community composting is an untapped middle ground between composting in the backyard at home and turning your food over to the city.

FoodShare, a non-profit community group that tackles hunger and food issues, has a mid-size compost processing operation at its Brock Ave. and Croatia St. headquarters.

Using scraps and waste from its catering group and Good Food Box (a produce box delivery program), it creates compost that it uses for its gardens and urban farm projects.

Thomas Ogorkis, a Queen's University commerce student, recently launched Dineline.ca, a site where restaurants post dining specials. They can post “dings” in “live time” on Twitter (@DineLineTO).

“Aside from enticing new customers to try their establishments, yes, the site also allows restaurants to avoid having food go to waste,” says Ogorkis.

Restaurants often sell time-sensitive food through daily specials, but diners don't find out about them until they're inside. This way they can find out ahead of time.

“It's an alternative to the `buy one app, get the second at half price' deal that everyone is familiar with,” says Ogorkis.

Whether we eat at restaurants, in work or school cafeterias or at home, we should reduce waste (the first R in the reduce, reuse, recycle mantra).

“When standing in front of your garbage, the choice shouldn't only be recycle or throw away,” writes U.S. author Alexandra Zissu in The Conscious Kitchen. “There's no such thing as `away.' It's just elsewhere.”

So learn to love your leftovers.

And if you're scared that your cooked or uncooked food might be bad, check out Stilltasty.com or its app. Its “keep it or toss it” database reveals how long various foods and drinks stay safe and tasty — and how to store them.

At the very least, help popularize doggie bags. Ask for them at restaurants, hand them out at dinner parties, consider them for your wedding.

Toronto's Belle Fleur Events made gorgeous “doggie boxes” for Lindsay and Jesse Cournoyer's wedding last February at the Distillery District's Fermenting Cellar.

Knowing guests would each get a 4-1/2-inch (12-cm) Bobbette & Belle mini-cake to end their three-course meals, planner Kara Greenwood and the couple brainstormed about how to present a “cute little option” and prevent waste.

The came up with elegant doggie boxes emblazoned with a sticker version of the couple's wedding logo.

Belle Fleur now tries to offer doggie bags when it has a sweets' table at a wedding. As Greenwood notes: “People always like to take home souvenirs.”

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